


A Strange Friendship

by stateofintegrity



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9923846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: In this AU, Middle Earth has taken on a bit of a fairy-tale/ folklore flavor. Legolas, son of the Forest King, has been cursed by his father, turned into a selkie for past sins and his resemblance to a mother lost at sea. Gimli finds the wounded, enspelled elf and brings him to Erebor. (More relationships to be added later).





	

In a season of berry-burdened briars, blood-bright leaves, and rowan burning itself out against lengthening nights, blue smoke rolled from the surface of the ash-and-cobalt moon. Bedded down in leaf-fall inside of a mushroom ring, Gimli son of Gloin winced. He heard the dull thud of metal thudding into flesh. It was a sound he expected. Redcap Goblins were fond of giving pain – and they doled their gifts out slowly. He had seen their handiwork before, forest villages repainted in splatters, blood pooling on stone, going black as jet.

 

Something splashed into the water.

 

Gimli heard the goblins laugh and stamp their boots in a savage show of approval. When they marched away in their iron-shod boots, they were singing. Gimli knew what oath they would take; he had seen it before. They would find the closest settlement – a human village more like than not – and pour strong liquor down their throats without even removing their bloody gloves. They would take the village’s women – either those they could win with false promises of protection or women who had no protection, women they could force. Humans were foul, they joked among themselves, but being stationed in the Vale had to have _some_ reward.

 

Once they had gone, Gimli stood. His hands went to the heavy belt at his waist. A traveler’s belt, its ornaments were severe: the heads of throwing axes and the handles knives. The goblins were likely gone, but it paid to be cautious; he moved the great axe into his hands and felt reassured by its heft. He heard his king’s voice in his head. “Curiosity will kill a great cliff-dwelling cat as easily as a kitten,” Thorin would have told him, but something drew him along. The moonlight dug into the leaves like silver hooves, unearthing stray bits of radiance, like a dwarrow sifting gems from river silt. The dark water rolled like the eye of a horse. The center shined white; a body was floating there.

 

Between the woodland spiders, forest king’s hunters, and goblin patrols, death was more common than the leaves on the ground. Long-lived, dwarrows had little fear of that figure that men imagined as a grim specter with a pale, curved blade. In a world where Death was so busy, Gimli knew that he should be content to let the body in the pond sink below the surface, to be imprisoned in later months by fringes of dark ice. Gimli had sent goblins sinking through those dark marsh waters.      

 

“Mahal’s beard and balls,” he muttered before hauling a long branch from the forest floor, bark slippery from lying in autumn rain. Using the limb like a giant hook, he caught the dead figure and hauled it closer. The dwarf’s assessment was quick; he had recovered an elf with pale hair, who was too thin, his skin damaged with many marks of abuse. Then the firstborn’s chest heaved and the body became a living elf coughing liquid from his lungs. _I always thought them fragile_ , Gimli thought, quietly marveling. He lifted the elf from the water with ease and laid him on the burning leaves.  

 

The elf’s pelt glimmered – seal white, a frozen tundra color – and his eyes opened to shine forth glacial light under the moon. His gaze was unfocused. Gimli decided that his unnatural pallor knew nothing of sickness – who had ever heard of a _sick_ elf? – but marked it as the strange, perilous whiteness of an albino stag. Hunters had always tried to splinter the bones of the white hart on their spears; Gimli wondered if the goblins had pursued this one because of the shine of him. He unlaced a strange, sodden cloak from around his pale throat and saw his eyes close. He imagined that the elf had gone where no one else could follow and he looked on him again.

 

The broken body conjured poetry in him. _The night is a great, black horse_ , he thought, _and he is the blaze on its face_. Only the elf’s nails were dark, blackened when he clawed at the ground, seeking shelter from goblin boots. Besides the cloak, his clothes were rags, torn with the beating he had received. Lifting the elf into his arms, he wrapped him in his own cloak, pinning it shut with the badge of his house: stones striking sparks of lemon quartz, garnet, and orange sphalerite. A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth when he imagined his father’s rage at that brooch being pinned on an elf. _He may not live long enough to inspire anyone to anger_ , the dwarf reflected. _If that is so, I will return here and bury him in the dark mud of this shore_.

 

Around him, the night bunched its muscles and blinked its eyes; they contained universes. The wind stilled and Gimli walked into the forest. He stopped only once, filling a small flask with the black water from which he had taken the elf.

 

 ***

 

 

Legolas woke to the smells of earth and stone; he seemed to be on some sort of island in the sky. “Aii!” cried the elf, digging his fingers into the earth as if to anchor himself against the infringing sky.

 

“Do not fash yourself, elf,” said Gimli, turning from the fire. “You are safe. Stay still, and you’ll soon be warm and fed. If you will permit me, I’ll see to your wounds as well as I can until I can get you to a true healer.”

 

The dizziness that had claimed him began to draw back, and Legolas propped himself up on his hands. Relief flooded him when he saw his cloak near at hand. He clenched a fist in its waterlogged folds.

 

“You needn’t seek there for moisture. I’ve bound a flask about your throat.”

 

Legolas gawked. “How could you… You know what I am?”

 

“Aye.” The dwarf’s deep eyes were hooded. _And knowing, I should have run fast and far_. He had spent most of his life running from kelpies and brownies, fey and fairy folk. Something in him drew them out; he had always been able to sense them and to see them through their disguises. The creature before him was and _was not_ an elf, and he had taken pains to save both parts. He came closer and gave a bow of greeting, his beard dragging in the dust of the ledge on which they were sheltering. “I am Gimli son of Gloin, of Durin’s folk of the Lonely Mountain. I found you after you had afforded some entertainment to a raiding troop of goblins. I would have returned you to your folk, but we know little of elves in the mountain, so I have brought you with me. We still have a journey before us, but you can rest among my people and my king will see you escorted safely home.”

 

The elf’s beautiful face was bitter – almost pained. He answered Gimli’s bow by bringing a hand to his breast and bowing over his hand. “I thank you for your care, Gimli Gloin’s son. I stand deeply in your debt. As for a home and kin… I fear you have rescued only an exile; my father might have rejoiced to find the goblins had finished their work.” A pale brow arched. “I am Legolas Thranduillion, son of the Forest King.” His voice softened. “You may have heard of me.”

 

Gimli had. “It was he who cast the curse upon you then,” Gimli guessed. “He who made you a selkie.” It sounded like “silky” coming from the dwarf’s tongue.

 

“I would not live as he bade.” There was more, much more, but he sat before a dwarf and a stranger and he lacked the strength to confront old wounds when new ones were making themselves so vividly felt. “Thank you for protecting me.”

 

Gimli seemed to sense his discomfort. “You’re chilled. Here, let me help.” He had already covered the elf with his traveling cloak. The one he unwound now bore his clan’s colors: cinnamon, new moss, butterscotch, and mulberry – the pattern handed down from King Gloin of old.

 

“You can’t!” the enspelled elf protested, but the intersecting colors were already falling down around him like leaves. Moments later, Gimli had stoked the fire into a brighter blaze and placed a cup in the elf’s hands. Legolas sipped at the hot brew and tasted cinnamon and licorice – and maybe some medicinal herbs meant to dull the pain rising in his bruised limbs. Feeling more alert, he looked around again. They were high in the peaks, on the road to Erebor. “You bore me here,” he realized aloud. “Me and your pack and your weapons? And did not fall?”

 

The dwarf smiled beneath his bright beard. “Dwarves are very strong,” he said at last. “And you, elf, are very light.”

 

Strange as it was, Legolas felt himself glad not to be a burden. It seemed a long time since he had been only Legolas in anyone’s eyes. He drew the cloak tighter around his body and looked long on the dwarf who had drawn him from the water.


End file.
